Joining both hands in respect, Kirpal Singh replied, "Baba, I leave it in your hands."
Baba said, "Should you be in India then, I will send Eruch to bring you to spend that night with me."
Kirpal Singh agreed and put the slip of paper in his pocket.1 Embracing him once more, Baba led him by the hand outside. Before taking Baba's leave, Kirpal Singh requested that he be allowed to go directly to Poona without stopping at the dak bungalow where Eruch had met them that morning. This made Baba happy, and permission was given, it being in accord with his usual custom.
As Kirpal Singh and his three followers were nearing their car, suddenly one of them remembered that they had forgotten to present a basket of mangoes to Baba. Laughing, Kirpal Singh remarked, "We have forgotten everything because we are here in a different world!" Baba accepted the fruit with love and Kirpal Singh received another embrace. The party was about to be seated when they remembered that they had also forgotten a box of sweets for Baba. All laughed joyfully, saying that it gave them another chance of seeing Baba.
Finally, the car was driving off when Eruch remembered that Kirpal Singh had forgotten the copies of Sobs & Throbs and The Wayfarers that Baba had presented to him. He managed to stop the car on the roadside just in time and handed the two books to Kirpal Singh.
Another visitor later that same day was a young man from Manchester, England, named Keith N. Secker, 24. For quite a long while, Keith had been searching for something he could not find in all the books he had read on philosophy. Then a friend advised him to read the Discourses, which deeply stirred him. Therein, he said, he "found the answer." After reading God To Man and Man To God, he was so anxious to see Meher Baba that he gave up his job and came to India with very little money. He did not know any of Baba's lovers in England, but made his way to Poona and then to Meherabad. There he saw Padri, who directed him to Adi Sr. in Ahmednagar, who told him Baba was in Satara in seclusion.
Footnotes
- 1.As it turned out, Kirpal Singh did not return to spend the night near Baba and this was the last time that they met.